Hierarchical Approaches to Biosemiotic Literary Criticism

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore what Timo Maran calls “Hierarchical Approaches to Biosemiotic Criticism.” Accordingly, I discuss three novels, Darwin’s Radio, by Greg Bear; Clay’s Ark, by Octavia E. Butler; and, The Overstory, by Richard Powers, novels that dramatize how, as Maran writes, “we are not uniform subjects, but rather hierarchical structures that contain many interacting layers of organization, all of which have their own subjectivity, memory, and semiotic competence” (Biosemiotic criticism. Chapter 14. In G. Garrard (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of ecocriticism. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2014b). Darwin’s Radio and Clay’s Ark, two titles based on two parallel possessives that hint ironically at how we do not possess ourselves, provide characters, themes, and plots that allow for an explication both of how we not ourselves (not uniform subjects) when looking inward (the domain of what Thomas Sebeok calls “endosemiotics,” and how we are also not ourselves (not uniform subjects) when looking outward (a domain open to analysis in terms of what Susan Petrilli calls “semioethics” [From the semiotic animal to the semioethic animal: The humanism of otherness and responsibility. In J. Deely, S. Petrilli, & A. Ponzio (Eds.), The semiotic animal (pp. 67–86). New York, Ottawa, Toronto: Legas, 2005]). Concepts such as Lynn Margulis’s “symbiogenesis” (explored at length in Myra Hird. The origins of sociable life: Evolution after science studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Hoffmeyer’s “semiogenic creativity” (Biosemiotics: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs. Scranton and London: University of Scranton Press, 2008), and René Thom’s “nervous system lateralization” (Semio physics: A sketch (Vendla Meyer, Trans.). Redwood City: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., 1990) are woven tother in my articulation of my “semiotic-animal principle” and my “third-body phenomenon” concept.